Krystallia Sakellariou

On August 15,  the “What Would Your Dream Day Be Like” video is being shown at the Videoholica International Video Art Festival in Varna, Bulgaria.

You can watch the video here.

Luis Ricardo is a cartoonist/animator from Puebla, Mexico. His Dream Day would take place, partly at the Italian Coffee Company, on Avenida Reforma / 2 Norte just next to the zócalo in Puebla.  That´s also where I met him yesterday to interview him about his dream day:

Last week I inaugurated my new tripod and took the above photo of myself.

I usually carry with me a couple of pictures of my family. One of my favorite photographs is the one of my dad on the top. It was taken in the late 60s or early 70s, on the house lot where my parents decided to build their house; the house which some years later became my first home.

I like the photograph of my dad because it captures so many things about him, as well as the surroundings where I grew up.  It shows the contrast between himself and the place which he and my mum had chosen to start their new life.

He, dressed in a black suit, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Around him, nothing else but trees. He looks so misplaced at first; a man from the city, from a different country, now surrounded by nothing but Swedish nature. The same nature as I later grew up in, and came to take for granted myself. In the same time, he looks completely settled, thanks to his cup of coffee and the cigarette. It makes me think; If you bring with you some of your habits, then you can probably live almost anywhere in the world.

When I bought myself the black jacket that I am wearing on the picture, I remembered the photo of my dad, and the resemblence struck me. I decided to take a photo of myself, dressed up as my dad, in my new home in Puebla, Mexico (and with my stolen tree to the right). It took me quite some time to get the right pose…

Sometimes the longer you stay in a place, the more things there seem to be to discover. A couple of days ago I went to Tehuacán for the first time, which is the second largest city in the state of Puebla. Tehuacán is a city with a long history. Archaeologist have found traces of communities who lived there already around 8000 B.C.

The City of Tehuacán and its surrounding villages have a very rich cultural life. The name Tehuacán comes from the indigenous language Náhuatl and it means the Place of the Gods. The language Náhuatl is widely spoken in this region as well as several other parts of Mexico.

At the zócalo in Tehuacán I met Victor. This is his Dream Day:

In the afternoon we went to an event at the Museo del Valle de Tehuacán. There I met another man called Alfredo Ponce Caranzo, who is a teacher of indigenous eduaction as well as a musician, writing songs in Náhuatl. His Dream Day goes like this:

Cinco de Mayo is a holiday celebrated on the 5th of May, to commemorate the Battle of Puebla in 1862, between the Mexican and the French army. The holiday is celebreated in the state of Puebla, as well as in the USA. Outside Mexico, some people falsely believe that this is Mexico´s Independence Day, which is celebrated on September 16.

In Puebla and by the Mexicans living in the USA, Cinco de Mayo is celebrated as a way to manifest Mexican nationalism and Mexican heritage, and of course to commemorate the first battle in the war with France where the Mexican army defeated a much better equipped French army. (The war was still won by the French though).

Mexican people today have very different opinions about whether Cinco de Mayo should be celebrated or not. Since the Cinco de Mayo parade passes by a few blocks from where I live, I decided to ask the people from Puebla what they thought about the celebrations:

If Rubén Banda can do it, so can I:

Watch New Videos on Youtube >>

When I went to Café Britania to buy coffee a few days ago, I ran into Edgar González Ruiz. He is a Mexican author, historian and journalist, and while he was waiting for his friend, he let me interview him about his Dream Day:

There are two areas in Puebla with names that I always mix up. One is called La Luz, and the other one La Paz. However, the two areas have absolutely nothing in common. La Paz used to be the the place where all the millionaires in Puebla lived in the 1980s (nowadays, the same people have moved to gated communities outside the city). La Luz on the other hand, is a working class area, and one of the best places to go for grocery shopping in central Puebla.

When I first moved to Puebla, I was used to grocery shopping in a supermarket, where fruit, meat and fish were all wrapped in plastic. At La Acocota, La Luz, everything is fresh, and you can buy fruit and vegetables for a fraction of what they would cost back in Sweden. Going to La Acocota has become one of my weekly routines, and now I wonder if I could get used to buying fresh food in a supermarket again.

More Photos from La Acocota on Flickr >>

Spring is my favourite season in Puebla. It is the warmest, driest and sunniest part of the year, and it is also the period when the Jacaranda trees blossom. I had never seen these trees before I moved to Mexico, and apparently they exist only in tropical and subtropical regions, in mainly South America, but also in Australia, India and many other places.

When the Jacaranda trees blossom, the streets in Puebla turn completely blue and purple. It looks beautiful. I took a walk around my neighborhood today and photographed the Jacaranda trees.

More Photos of Jacaranda Trees on Flickr >>

About an hour from Mexico City, and just over two hours from Puebla, lies an enormous archaeological site called Teotihuacán. Teotihuacán was a prehispanic city which was founded sometime around 200 B.C. The name Teotihuacán comes from the language Náhuatl and means  “The city of the gods” or “The place where men became gods”.

At around 450 A.D,  the city reached its peak and covered between 20-30 km2, and had an estimated population of 150.000-250.000 people, which made it one of the largest cities in the world at this time. There is not much known about the people who constructed the city and its enormous pyramids. Even the real name of the city is unknown. The name Teotihuacán came from the Aztecs who found the ruins of the city, centuries after it had fallen.

In Teotihuacán two large pyramids stand out; The Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. The Pyramid of the Sun is the third largest pyramid in the world and it measures 225 m across, and 65 meters high. These pyramids used to be coloured red.  Today you can still see some of the traces of the red pigment. It must have been an impressive view to look at these enormous red pyramids towards a clear blue sky, and the green nature surrounding them.

There is a wide avenue connecting the two pyramids called the Avenue of the Dead. The avenue is lined with smaller pyramids on both sides, leading up to the Pyramid of the Moon. The Avenue was given the name The Avenue of the Dead, by the Aztecs who thought that the pyramids in Teotihuacán were enormous tombs. However, the pyramids in Mexico (unlike the ones in Egypt) were not constructed as tombs (with one exception in Palenque, Mexico), but rather as temples, to worship their Gods.

If you walk down the Avenue of the Dead, with the Pyramid of the Moon in your back, you eventually come to another pyramid or temple; The Temple of Quetzalcóatl (the temple of the feathered serpent).

On your way to the temple you can also take a look at some well-preserved murals. Unfortunately we missed many of them, but we did see the Mural of the Puma which was beautiful. (Some people claim it is a Jaguar. We heard a guide talking to a group referring to the mural as the “Jaguar mural”, but Juan´s brother Alan, who is a biologist, said it wasn´t…)

On the way to the Quetzalcóatl temple, you pass a small river and on the other side of it, you can see the ruins of different residential areas. There is little known about what the lives of the people from Teotihuacán were like, but archaeologists have found traces of many different ethnic groups who lived in these residential areas, something which wasn´t common in many other prehispanic cities. This is why Teotihuacán is thought to have been something like a prehispanic New York City, where people lived in different neighborhoods depending on their origin, and where they would keep their old traditions, just like in New York today, where you have places like Little Italy, Greek Astoria etc.

Most of what we know about Teotihuacán today, was discovered by the archaeologists who began to excavate the site in the early 20th Century. However, a hundred years later, there are still many mysteries to be solved. Why was an enormous city like Teotihuacán abandoned at around 600 A.D and what happened to its inhabitants?

Below you can take a look at an old photograph of The Pyramid of the Sun that I recently found in an antique store.